Why Public Sector Cuts are Not the Con-dem Panacea

On Wednesday, 8th September, John Ward (ex-Medway Tory councillor, find out why here) posted a blog which criticised the Green Party mainly through the use of insults. The paragraphs below in italics are quotes from Mr. Ward’s blog and following each such paragraph is our short response.

The local Greens show their true colours (ahem!) when, rather than trying to put our country back on its feet, they propose that privatising any part of the public sector should be made “a treasonable offence” (check the next to last sentence).

The Green Party is “trying to put our country back on its feet” but through fair means rather than the deep spending cuts favoured by other parties; for example, did you know that more than £100 billion a year is lost because of abuse of loopholes in the tax system, tax bills remaining unpaid and from illegal non-payment of tax.

“…it is readily apparent that all the means needed to fund the fiscal deficit without any cuts in public spending in the UK can be found. In that case we make the simple point now, no politician can say there isn’t a tax raising alternative to cuts.”

Oh yes, they also want to scrap Trident with nothing to replace it, and no doubt other equally unintelligent ideas…

The cost of Trident over its lifetime will be about £97 billion. The Trident missile system came into service in 1992, ostensibly as a ‘deterrent’ against the Cold War threat of the Soviet Union, however, it was formally dissolved on 26th December 1991. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Trident has been repositioned as essential for securing the UK’s ‘vital interests’ such as overseas trade, investment and resources including oil without quite explaining how. Trident threatens the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and world stability. Scraping Trident would free up a considerable amount of money, set an example to other nations and improve world stability – this is not an “unintelligent” position.

If the Greens are too thick to be able to tell one from the other [what is good in the public sector and what is “largely wasteful, inefficient and unaffordable in its present form”], and merely lump them all together without any intelligence whatsoever (as that ‘blog post makes unambiguously clear), then they really are a load of rubbish, aren’t they?